


Cold Shoulder

by EvilMuffins



Category: Dangan Ronpa
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair, F/M, Fluff, Huddling For Warmth, Snowed In, Togafuka Weekend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 08:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8743117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilMuffins/pseuds/EvilMuffins
Summary: Hope's Peak campus is hit by a blizzard.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was 'winter'

“Will that be all, then?”

Fukawa sputtered wordlessly through the small gap that Togami had allowed between the door and its frame, just large enough to have allowed the misplaced pen to pass through.

 _That_ wasn’t _all,_ Fukawa’s mind shouted, hopping up and down inside of her skull. She had been hoping that he would at least thank her, even if praising her was seemingly off the table for such a small favor. Not only that, but there was the matter of the weather at hand as well.

“I-I found your pen…you dropped it on your way out of class,” she tried again, fingers curling into the hem of her skirt.

His frown only deepened. “Yes, I know. That became evident when you showed up at my door holding it. However, now that I am holding it, I would venture that your reason for being here has met its end. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the draft from the hall is getting in.”

With that, he shut the door.

At least it wasn’t a slam, she thought, turning to head back toward the girls’ dorms. Besides, she always found a gnawing feeling in the pit of stomach when she heard people thanking others when you could tell that they weren’t actually thankful. She liked that he didn’t lie to her about being grateful for the return of the lost pen. Not only that, but it was true, she had been letting cold air into his room.

Taking a deep breath before hugging her arms around her body, Fukawa opened the door leading out into the wall of white.

Although it was nearly as cold as Togami’s disposition out on the Hope’s Peak campus, there was almost little need to rush back to her own room, considering that the heat had gone out in the entirety of girls’ dorm building. Although it wasn’t as if she wasn’t used to feeling the cold while indoors; there hadn’t been any radiator vents in the closet back home, after all.

She found herself unsure if the shudder that had just arouse in her came of the unpleasant memory resurfacing, or the snow that was mounting so high that it reached over far over her shoes, sliding down inside with every deliberate step down the unshoveled walk. She imagined that it might have squelched, had she been able to feel her toes.

* * *

 

 _Another_ knock came at his door. Togami sighed, rising from his desk to answer it. “Yes?”

“Why hello there, Togami-kun!” Came the chipper voice of Ishimaru the very moment the door was cracked open. “Lovely day isn’t it?”

Togami refused to dignify the remark with a response. Clearly Ishimaru was too busy to studying up on school rules to look out of the window now and then.

“Anyway,” the hall monitor continued, “I was just going down the line, checking in on everyone. You see, the girls lost power over in their building, so I just wanted to make sure that everything’s hunky-dory over here.”

Togami raised a brow. “None of the girls have heat, then? In this weather?”

“It’s a real shame, isn’t it? I’d say we invite them to stay over here, but the rules say that we can’t have girls over after curfew. I can’t imagine why that would be though. I mean, it isn’t as if any of our fellow schoolmates would be reckless enough to want indulge in any hanky-panky until after marriage, I am right?” His chuckle contained not even so much as a fleck of irony.

“Quite,” replied Togami tersely, hoping to return to the book waiting at his desk as soon as possible.

After rambling about another some-or-other for a time, Ishimaru finally (thankfully) took his leave, allowing Togami to settle down back into his desk chair.

However, although he held the book open in front of him, his mind traveled out of the window into the blizzard rather than into the story.  

Something was nagging at him. Was he cold? Hungry, or tried, perhaps? No, physically speaking, he was quite comfortable. Then what could be the problem?

Togami stood, pushing in the chair, and pulling on his coat. Perhaps a walk was in order to clear his head…

* * *

 

Had it been any other voice behind her, Fukawa would have jumped, turning around sharply to scold whoever it had been for sneaking up on her, and possibly being a stalker-pervert as well, depending on her level of startled. However, the person clearing his throat behind on her was the one person she would always be delighted to hear coming up behind her…preferably shirtless and in bed, rather than in a mossy pea coat on the sidewalk, but she would take what she could get…for now.

“B-byakuya-sama! You should go back inside!” She insisted, even though she was pleased to see him. It would be a shame for him to catch cold, after all…even if it would mean that she could spoon-feed him soup and nurse him back to health at his bedside-

“I was feeling a little restless, so I decided to take a walk,” Togami explained- although he hadn’t been asked- before clearing his throat and adding, in (what he hoped was) a conversational tone, “I heard that the heat was out in your room.”

Fukawa nodded eagerly, eyes wide. Could this be going where she hoped it was, even though he had just sent her away moments before?

“If you were to catch cold, you might spread it to the rest of the class, myself included. I don’t have time for your nasty germs to compromise my grades, so I thought that it might be best to nip this in the bud. You may come up to my room for twenty minutes in order to warm up, during which time you will not interrupt my reading. Is that acceptable?”

Although curfew was fast approaching, the staff rarely enforced it.

“Yes! Very acceptable! Exceptionally acceptable!”

And so, after a brisk trek back to the boys’ dorm, Fukawa found herself standing in the middle of the floor of Togami’s room.

…At the exact moment the lights went out.

Togami shut his book with a snap that sounded louder than it would have without the absence of humming lights, clock radios, and other electronics, before rummaging in his desk drawer for a small pen-light.

“Y-you’re so prepared!” Fukawa pointed out. Togami turnt in his chair. “I thought I asked you to not interrupt my reading.”

Fukawa rang her hands. “You…put down the book, so…”

She wasn’t wrong.

As he returned to his book, squinting by the penlight, Fukawa padded over to the bookcase, unsure of what else to do since conversation had been vetoed.

“What is that sound?”

“W-what sound? Is it my breathing? Because I can make that stop if-“

“It sounds like a fish wrapped in newspaper hitting the floor. Are your socks wet?” Togami asked incredulously, as if people sent out to walk home in two feet of snow didn’t often become afflicted with soggy footwear.

“I can take them off!” Fukawa offered.

Togami held up a hand to stop her, as he stood and crossed to his dresser. “Take a pair of mine for now. The last thing I need is your unwashed feet on my rug.”

He handed her the first pair from on top of the drawer.

 _An argyle man, of course,_ Fukawa thought with glee, removing her own one foot at a time, carefully balancing herself one foot so as not to place it down on the rug.

She wriggled her toes experimentally, the feeling already flowing back to them. The mens-sizes socks were loose and floppy on her, like the ones gyarus sometimes wore. She was delighted.

Togami frowned. Somehow the sight of someone else wearing an article of his clothing invited the return of that odd niggling feeling in stomach.

“I suppose you’ll be heading back to your room again now.”

“…I will?”

“The power’s out here as well. Can you think of a reason that you should stay?” Togami crossed his arms.

She could think of many, in fact.

“L-look out the window! There’s no way that the doors aren’t half-way buried by now. So…so…”

He sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose. “I suppose I have no choice but to let you stay the night, then.”

He then proceeded to lay out a laundry-list of ground rules, of which Fukawa heard not one. She would be spending the night with her beloved White Knight. It was almost too good to be true, to the point where she began to wonder if she were really lying unconscious out in the snow hallucinating instead.

“…Is that clear?”

“Yes!”

Togami looked unconvinced, however he nodded, settling back down at his desk for what felt like the fiftieth time that night. “…Why are you breathing down my neck?”

“I thought that maybe I could read too, t-to help pass the time,” Fukawa replied from over his shoulder. “You-you have the only light…”

Togami felt a shiver run down his back. As much as he wanted to tell himself that it was due to his proximity to his classmate, he realised that the room was fast becoming chilly, and the temperature was only going to plunge as the night went on.

There were two solutions that immediately came to mind: bundle up in his comforter like some sort of wriggling caterpillar in front of Fukawa, or…

He felt Fukawa’s shoulder brush his as she continued to lean in.

“Fukawa, come closer.”

“R-really?” She was even more certain now that she must truly be lying lifeless out in the snow.

“It only makes sense for us to conserve body heat, as we don’t how long it’ll be before maintenance will get this fixed.”

Fukawa snatched up the opportunity before he could changed his mind, lower body hovering over his lap as if she planed to sit _right there_. However, he cleared his throat, patting the bit of room he had made on the corner of the seat by scooting over. (he hoped it was still dark enough for her to not have seen Togami Byakuya, of all people, _scoot_ )

She nestled in beside him, a soft coo of contentment escaping her throat, as the warmth of his side pressing up against her’s flooded into her.

Only one thing could improve upon the moment. “Byakuya-sama, I-I can’t see the book. Could you maybe turn it just a bit?”

Fukawa couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t say how many times she had imagined herself just sitting and reading together with him, cozy in their living room as their nineteen children ran and screamed in the playroom, in the care of their hapless nanny, Komaru (she had always thought it would make a good nanny name ever since Naegi had mentioned his sister once during class).

The book remained stationary, however Togami’s lips moved instead as his smooth voice began to read from the page: “’ _That was very true, he thought. There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy…’”_

Fukawa closed her eyes. Between the soothing tones of his voice, the dim lighting, and warmth of his body, she quickly drifted off.

When she awoke sometime during the night, it was to find that the lights had returned, neither of them having flipped the switches off after the blackout had begun. The next thing she noticed was that Togami was no longer by her side. As she turned to see him lying in the bed behind her, something heavy- the comforter- slid from her shoulders as she saw that he slept with nothing but a sheet despite the cold.

With an impish smile, Fukawa tiptoed over to the bed, tucking the thick blanket around him as carefully as she could not to wake him, hoping all the while that it would be far from the last time.

 

_end_

 

**Author's Note:**

> The book they're reading is 1984!


End file.
